One of my favorite Fantasy races are the Undead, followed by Chaos and Reptilians.
I already have my Lost World Project which tells a tale of Conquistadores, Reptilians, Dinosaurs, Undead and a lot more.
However those Undead are the Egyptian Style and Pirate/Jungle style.
This thread will be filled with my beloved Gothic Undead, Demons, Monsters and all things that go bump in the night.
In my Lost World Project I tell an ongoing story, here I will post about all other dark things without coherency.
There might be snippets of loose stories to accompany a mini or not...
I hope you guys and gals and creatures will like it.
Let's kick off with the critters I painted a while ago to get a feel of what is coming.
Enjoy! ( or not)
Bats and a Murder of Crows
EDIT: I will include some Bones and minis. The bulk will be metal and I want to give this an oldschool vibe.
Preferred minis will be, Reaper, Grenadier, Ral Partha, Rafm, Metal Magic, Otherworld and Early Citadel.
The Asian Undead will be from Zenith since I backed the Kensei Undead Samurai KS and will get their own thread.
Eldessa Necromancer
Ral Partha Female Vampire
Lurien and Aysa
Bat Demon

The New Offering from Paymaster Games and their Going Native line. Going Native: From out of the Mists is a model centered campaign that will cover different heroes, warriors, monsters and gods of the New World.
Here is the link to the KS Page -

And now for the rest of Village Attacks, the star players themselves, the Monsters and Town Heroes.
Looking over the photos, I may need to do another coat of fixer spray. They're looking a little bit frosty in the pictures, which is not as obvious to the naked eye.
Part 1 can be found here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/83216-lidless-eye-hobbies-village-attacks-peasants-hunters/
To start, the characters themselves, the MONSTERS:
Next is the piece that convinced me to join the Kickstarter, because you can play as Baba Yaga:
Beware her scream, the Banshee!
The ever-hungry Wendigo:
Another eater of the dead, the Ghoul:
Born of fire, the Efreet:
Born of smoke, the Djinn:
Everliving and eternal, the Mummy:
Ditto, the Lich:
The old drowner, the Vodyanoy:
I don't have much to say about the Baykok:
A poor choice for a one-night stand, the Glaistig:
Now starring in his own Netflix original series, the Vampire:
Another regrettable Tinder match, the Succubus:
The old man of the woods, the Leshy:
Ready to whip it real good, the Dullahan:
The other star players, though it's your job to viciously murder them, the Town Heroes!
The Pathfinder:
The Djinn Trapper:
The Traveller:
The Skald:
The Spirit Walker:
The Assassin:
The Maharib:
The Bounty Hunter:
The Executioner:
The Wind Dancer:
The Alchemist:
The Portal Mage:
My personal favorite, the Fisherman:

These maginificent minis were donated by @malefactus to add to my Lost World Project.
WIP Here:
http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69308-lost-world-project-glitterwolf-paints-coldblooded-creatures-and-conquistadores/&page=109
Eureka Miniatures ( Pond Wars Range).
I painted the Frog riders as Poison Dart Frogs and the Toad mounts as Bombina Orientalis ( Chinese Firebelly Toads).
I had both as pets in my youth.
Here is the unit, and in the latter pics on my Jungle Photobackdrop Board.
EDIT :
I wasn't completely satisfied with Red Frog, so a little Vallejo Heavy Warm Grey and some Reaper Sample Paint for his mouth.

Wow I feel really outclassed here but I've gotta start somewhere...
Painted these for a friend's birthday, it was several months past his birthday when I finished, lol. Unfortunately before I could properly finish he had to move so I had to rush and couldn't do as much as I'd like. A lot of bases remained unpainted, and some touch ups on some of the skintones that I was planning on doing after had to be left as they were.
Not sure how many I can fit before it starts flagging me as spam so I'm just gonna show a photo of all of them, and then some of the monsters. They're the ones I'm most satisfied with.
Blood Rage Base Game all painted minis
Fire Giant
Ice Giant
Troll

Here is the Lich from the Grenadier Monsters box set.
I didnt highlight the robe. I wanted it to stay grungy looking. I’m not sure if that was a mistake or not. How does one highlight a grungy purple robe? What color mix would one use?

The next set out of Bones 3, various monsters!
The Carrion Worm really grew on me!
The Temple Dragon is really cool. I hadn't even realized until I was inking it that the base was a statue of a robed woman:
The Manticore, who I was specifically hoping for before they announced it during the campaign. It's a classic monster I didn't have a mini of!
Lastly, the Giant Cobra. Kind of rushed this one along...he also appears to hide from the camera focus.

Now, MOST of us have a clue where the monsters came from, at least in a rudimentary sense. Tolkien invented the orc as we know it, and the giant spider in fantasy; Robert E. Howard seemed to have a thing for giant snakes. We know that centaurs came from ancient Greece, dwarves and trolls from Scandinavian myth, goblins from Western Europe, dragons from more or less everywhere, and so on. No, don't correct me; I'm bein' general here, and approaching a point.
I'm kinda curious, though: Where'd some of the weirdier critters come from?
It is legend among the Gamers and the Geekosphere about the bulette, the owlbear, and the rust monster. The legend has it that Gary Gygax, or perhaps Dave Arneson, back when The Game was just getting off the ground, had difficulty finding miniatures to represent various dungeon denizens. Keep in mind that historical miniatures, at the time, were relatively easy to find, (Knights, Archers, Men At Arms, and characters in general) but fantasy gaming as we know it did not yet exist. No mythological monsters! So Gary or Dave, or whoever... cheated.
And several inhabitants of the first edition (and later) Monster Manual had some rather peculiar origins. In the picture, at center front, you see what became the Bulette, whereas to the left, there's a Rust Monster and to the right, an Owlbear in brilliant yellow.
In the seventies, you could get these critters in bags in the dime store or on a spinrack in the drugstore, anywhere that sold cheap toys from no-name manufacturers. They were usually marked as dinosaurs, but this particular mob resembles no known prehistoric creatures; the majority of them seem to be knockoffs of monsters from Japanese TV shows like Ultraman, Spectreman, and other ancestors of the Power Rangers. Gary himself spoke about using plastic dinos in lieu of dragons, and the AD&D Monster Manual has the majority of dinos known to pop culture as of 1975. So Gary noticed them at the dime store, bought a bag, and pitted them against his players. And these three creatures became the dreaded Rust Monster, Bulette, and Owlbear, as well as becoming obscure but treasured collectors items among the lords of geekdom.
Which means that all the owlbear miniatures being made right now are all because of a cheap Taiwanese knockoff toy based on a man in a suit monster who appeared on a Japanese kidshow back in the sixties. Or seventies. Or whatever.
It could be that this thread will be doomed to obscurity. I rather hope not. I'm hoping that others will add to it with critters that started out as obscure toys that later achieved a sort of immortality as modern gaming mythology. Do add to it. I'm still more'n a little curious.

This mummy was hungry when he woke up. He is now snacking on the poor adventurer who woke him. He is making a mess on the mable floor of his tomb as he is tracking the blood around and dribbling on the floor.
The pose was a bit strange with one hand held up and one hand near his face, so I tried to make sense of it by putting a big bloody hunk of meat in his outstretched hand. It's a bit gratuitous, but I'm ok with some gratuitous gore once in a while. If I ever use it in a D&D game, he is definitely tearing someone's arm off on a "natural 20."

So I did up these gentlemen. I made up a story in my head about how they're a trio of brothers who jointly run the biggest, baddest band of bugbears in the land. They'd make decent-ish foils for some low-level adventurers I think. Nothing mind-blowing in hand but they'll look fine on the table, which is generally always my goal anyway. I tried to get some blood-spatter going on, but admittedly I've never really looked into how to go about it. I just drybrushed some red onto their weapons (and Mogg's shield, though you can't see it). It turned out well enough you can tell what it's meant to be I think, but I know there are some stellar examples of it out there. I'll have to look into that for next time.

A few quick repaints. I'm quite pleased with how the gnoll turned out with such little effort.
Barghest Savagers (the photo is to bright but the minis aren't important enough for me to fix it :)
Gnoll Barbarian
Wolf Spiders

I've painted very few monsters, and I thought I'd get my toes wet by doing up a few rather iconic minis in the fire and water elementals from Bones I and II. I really like these guys. I need to pick up an earth elemental still, and have my fingers crossed for an air elemental in Bones III to round out the elemental quartet. I wish that the store weren't out (again/still) of the fire elemental, as I'd love to have another one. This one belongs to my roommate. He likes collecting Reaper minis, but doesn't paint them. So good news is I have plenty of minis to practice on. Bad news is once I move out from living with him, he'll have the majority of the minis. My hoard is growing, but slowly, as I have to wait for them to be in stock and also have money to spend (I missed the Kickstarters -- getting in on Bones III though!).
Anywho, the fire elemental I used a yellow wash, then drybrushed him after. The water elemental was just drybrushing. The darker blue on that one is the base mini's color.

I went back and forth over whether these needed to be linked for nudity, but they're not nude, they're plants that look sort of like women. I saw other versions posted on the forums so I guess they're okay.
These are fun figures. They're killer seaweed with humanlike form. They haven't got faces, just sort of eyespots. There are little skulls nestled under their fronds. I have them in metal too, but these are the first I've painted.
Here they are primed with Reaper Brown Liner.
I mixed a transparent dark green out of Phthalocyanine Green and Burnt Sienna and washed it over the chlorophyll-bearing parts of the plants.
I mixed a sickly pale green out of Phthalo Green, Hansa Yellow Opaque, Yellow Iron Oxide, Burnt Sienna, and a lot of Titanium White. It was actually for some frog's bellies, but I also used it to pick out the woman-forms of the monsters. First (on the left) there's one layer (it's semi-translucent), and some yellow sandy color washed over the bases. Against a dark background the color is almost unnoticeable in the white. Then (on the right) there's another layer on their flesh and more yellow on the bases. The color is coming out a little better.
I mixed a medium brown, sort of skin tone and washed it over the sand to head the color in the direction of more realism. I also added a bit of a very pale, just slightly greenish yellow as a highlight on the woman-forms.
They are pretty sloppy at the moment. I wanted to get basic coloring down before moving in to a finer level of detail.
I love that there are so many possibilities in the Bones figures.

I'm painting up some aquatic PCs and monsters for upcoming ocean adventures. I had primed and glued these to fender washers for bases last year, but only just got started painting them.
At that time I was priming Bones with a mixed brown of Burnt Umber and Titanium White, then washing over them with Burnt Umber to bring out the details. These days I think using just plain Reaper's Brown Liner is simpler and works better.
The two Tiik Warriors are based on one-inch washers and the Champion is on a 1.5-inch washer.
One fish-man is going to be greenish. I'm not really basing it on any actual fish species, although I may refer to pictures later.
I glazed a pure Iron Oxide Yellow on the bases to begin to build up a sandy color.
Then I washed over that with a much less saturated color with a similar value, a fairly complex mixed warm brown a little like a flesh tone.

I'm building an Ogre army for Mantic Games' Kings of War, since pictures of it in play seem to give off an old-school Warhammer 3rd Edition vibe in a lot of ways, and the game allows pretty free proxying of models, so you can use whatever you like and feel is cool. I put together and painted a couple of units of Mantic's new Ogre Shooter models recently.
The main reason I started Ogres though, was to have a reason/excuse to get out my classic Citadel Ogre models that I'd just painted for the pleasure of it. All of them painted between 10 and 23 years ago. I've also got several that are still unpainted, and a couple that got started and never finished. With this in mind, and after some bloody stupid moves a couple of years ago when I stripped some very well painted figures from my youth in order to repaint them "modern style" that I now hugely regret, I decided not to repaint these guys, but to touch up where needed (chipped paint or toning down overly garish bits, re-highlighting metals) but to keep the essence of them as they were originally painted. So where some of the highlighting is a bit rough, or the blending on the flesh tones isn't 100%, that stuff stays untouched. The old railway-flock bases have been redone with painted sand and tufts so they fit in with my current stuff, but that's mostly it, aside from the touch-ups.
I'll post them one at a time, and more complete pics will - as always - be on the blog (when it gets updated). I'll update this thread periodically after updating and photographing the figures as I go.
First Up:
Hrothyogg, Ogre Captain. Sculpted by Jes Goodwin.
For the moment, he's leading the first infantry unit. I've not glued him to the resin base, as I'm also considering mounting him in a chariot to be the Warlord of the entire force, as this is my favourite ogre figure ever, and also one of my favourite miniatures ever.

Hey, folks. Picked up some kobolds for the PF game I'm running, and I finally got them painted. These are the metal set of four, by Ben Siens, from the Dark Heaven line.
I'm afraid my photos are letting me down even more than my painting skills. I haven't figured out my setup, yet. I was really proud of how I highlighted these guys with orange highlights--I'm still working to eschew the too-white highlights and all--but they're washing pretty well in these pictures. Everything I'm trying lately tends to be either too light or too dark. Hopefully some of it's getting through, though.
Thanks for looking. Comments and criticism are very welcome. I've got some Bones kobolds still to paint, so any tips however specific would be most helpful.

Finally--FINALLY--finished the Goblin War Band on which I started a month and a half ago, before we moved. Reaper stuff, sculpted by Ben Siens. These are sculpts I really love--I've got some PF goblins headed my way, and they're cool, but I really dig the more traditional take. Or, at least, that seems more traditional to me, anyway. I likes 'em.
I don't know how well these are going to show, but I feel like I had some measure of success with these. I didn't over-highlight, at least not with the super-whitened green like I did with the orcs, while back. I used the same home-mixed green for these guys, but highlighted with a much more yellow mix of green. I'm really pleased with them in person, and am told the details are showing well, but I'm afraid the pictures might be losing it some. Hopefully this isn't a total waste of everyone's time. I'm having to figure out new lighting and everything for photographing my minis. And, I mean, I supposed I could wait until I get another, movable, lamp, but I'm way too excited for that. But yeah. Here we go:
Thanks for looking! Any input or advice you have about anything is totally welcome.

So today, I was painting. And taking occasional breaks to waste time on the internet. You know. "A day off." And I noted something interesting on artist Tony diTerlizzi's blog: Tony's got this really interesting article up about the origins of some of the first Dungeons and Dragons monsters... whose MINIATURES actually predate the MONSTER! Usually, someone comes up with the idea of "beholder" or "Frog Dragon" or whatever, and then someone SCULPTS the thing. But these creatures actually caused the development of their D&D counterparts -- in the illustration above, the rust monster, bulette, and owlbear, respectively. In this case, Gary Gygax bought a bag of dinosaurs at the dime store, found some things in there that were decidedly NOT dinosaurs, and literally whipped up encounters based on them ANYWAY. Can't blame him. Would you believe there was a time where miniatures of D&D monsters were really pretty hard to find? Outside of a bottle of Old Skiddocan Squeezin's, anyway. It got me to thinking about inspiration sources. I'm no sculptor... well, I am, but no one in their right mind would pay me to sculpt anything more complicated than a very relaxed ooze ... and I found myself looking at the figure I'm painting at the moment: the medusa from the first Bones kickstarter: 77037, by Bobby Jackson, for the completists.
Now, while this is a perfectly good medusa -- attractive, detailed, and certainly quite menacing -- it ain't the medusa described in Greek literature. I had to go and look around at the shelves to see the other medusa... 02354, sculpted by Jim Johnson. Not the poison koolaid guy, the sculptor. Two totally different guys, really.
...no... still not the Greek mythology version... where had I seen this before? And then it hit me: The original version of "Clash of the TItans." So... we have RPG adventurers facing off against a Greek mythology critter, as filtered through the sensibilities of movie SFX master Ray Harryhausen, and then through the minds of two different sculptors. Made me think hard and seriously about inspiration sources for sculptors. I mean, everyone has a mental idea of what a zombie looks like, sure... and owlbears... well, once you get the idea of "crossbreed between an owl and a bear, mostly bear with owl head, and big honkin' claws and the temperament of a wolverine who took the brown acid," you can draw a pretty quick mental image.
77156, by Jason Wiebe. Here, Jason Wiebe takes a basic idea by someone else, and goes pretty gonzo with it -- while the one in the picture up top looks like it might be satisfied with a few pick-a-nick baskets, Boo Boo, and watch out for Mr. Ranger... Jason's looks like it wants to rip my arm off and shove it down my throat, just to see the horrified look on my face. My point: The original idea wasn't Jason's, but he took it and ran with it. And he's not the first, nor is he the only. I was kind of surprised when the D&D folks didn't sue Blizzard for some of the things that turned up in World of Warcraft: Jason Wiebe coulda done 'em better.
...and anyway, I guess I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It made me think about cultural bleedover, and how "orcs" started out as one thing when I was twelve (Lord of the Rings) and became another thing when I was thirteen (Dungeons and Dragons), and would become yet another thing when I was in my late twenties (Warhammer), and to most of today's kids, have become yet ANOTHER thing (the LOTR and Hobbit movies). Like I said, cultural bleedover. Our myths are CHANGING. Sometimes in small ways, like owlbears in dynamic poses instead of just standing there. Sometimes in BIG ways, like the ever-changing orc. Anyway, anyone interested in diTerlizzi's blog article? It's here: http://diterlizzi.com/home/owlbears-rust-monsters-and-bulettes-oh-my/

I've just finished these today (excepting varnish and then the bases, they need tufts and weathering powder yet). Got them in the KS, nice models by Remy but not the most enjoyable painting experience (a slog, rather). Very glad to have them finished. Far less glad to need to do another six of them...
More pics on my blog (linked from my sig) along with my issues with the sculpts and some WIP for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

Looking for suggestions, both here with Reaper and abroad for Gamma World stand-ins.
I received the core rules and the two expansions all within the last year and while tokens for the various PCs and monsters are fine, real miniatures would be much more enjoyable.
Any suggestions are welcome.